'I CHOOSE FREEDOM!': For more than six decades, Hugues Aufray, this eternal young man, has pursued a career as a popular and respected artist, loved for his sublime songs, but also for the exemplarity of a free man who knew how to remain, a man who was attached to the land and its values.
Here is the first and only souvenir album of this artist. It relies, in part, on rare iconographic documents gathered thanks to Hugues Aufray who opened his archives, and to his photographers, Tony Frank and Gérard Bousquet, privileged witnesses of 60 years of career.
His ''very dear friend'' Bob Dylan writes in the foreword that Hugues Aufray played his hit Céline in front of the trio Peter, Paul and Mary, "and after they left, we started to speak". It is rather doubtful that this really happened, at least for that 1966 song.
Dylan also remembers that he visited Paris with Hugues Aufray. [That was in 1964 when Aufray lived in the Quartier Latin]. He then writes, about the recordings in French that Aufray did of his songs, that sometimes make him think they were the originals, and that it is him who covered and translated them into English.
By Hugues Aufray and Rémi Bouet, with foreword by Bob Dylan and postword by the photographer Tony Frank, Nouveau Monde Éditions 2022, hardcover, 193 pages, large format. ISBN 9782380943429.
2-page foreword by Bob Dylan |